Rest assured that the crickets you eat in the future will be humanely harvested. (Dale Markowitz)

In the future, we’ll commute on electric skateboards, eat apples that never go brown, and drink, like, a lot of Soylent. Or so it would seem from the vision of the future on display this past weekend at the Worlds Fair Nano.

Currently in its second year, the futurist festival brought together tech talks, a Drone Zone, immersive VR games, and an electric skateboard highway together under the roof of the Brooklyn Expo Center.

Under a banner that read “Future of Food,” fair organizers handed out free, unlimited bottles of Cacao Soylent from a stash of Soylent boxes piled mountain-high. On a table nearby, the snack company Seek showed off a glass terrarium filled with live crickets. Beside it stood a mason jar filled to the brim with dead crickets and a coffee grinder that pulverized their corpses into “cricket flour,” the secret sauce that gives the company’s Cinnamon Almond Crunch Granola 7G of protein per serving.

“They’re killed humanely—we freeze them,” Seek’s founder, Robyn Shapiro, told me. A man beside me tried a sample. “Impressive, I can’t taste the cricket at all,” he said. Reluctantly, I took a bite and immediately downed it with Soylent. My take: the taste was fine, but if you’re going to make granola from crickets, don’t use anything crunchy.

Nearby, I sampled Arctic Apples’ dried apple slices, genetically engineered to never turn brown. They were turning brown. (A rep from the company clarified that the brownness was caused by the drying, and that the fresh apples do not brown.)A $200 portable gluten sensor (Dale Markowitz)

Over by a group of food electronics companies, I found one of the festival’s most practical future food innovations: a $199 portable gluten sensor called Nima. Users place food samples in disposable cartridges about the size of a C battery. Custom-engineered antibodies inside them bind to gluten molecules in food, which the sleek, triangular Nima sensor detects within 2-3 minutes. At around $5 per one-time-use capsule, the system isn’t cheap, but the price point could be right for the company’s next, possibly life-saving device, slated to launch this winter—a portable peanut sensor.

Next to Nima, I discovered PicoBrew’s Pico Model C, a Keurig for homebrewed beer. About the size of a large coffee maker, it converts “PicoPaks”—custom blends of hops and grains that match the recipes of over 150 breweries (like a Dunkin Donuts K Cup)—into five liters of beer that’s fermented, carbonated, and ready to drink within 10-12 days.

A 500-foot electric skateboard “mega-track” separated the Future of Food area from the VR displays, where fairgoers zipped by on Boosted, Action, and Mellow boards.

“Is this hard?” I asked a sales rep from Mellow who handed me a helmet.

“Incredibly easy,” he replied. “Have you skated before?”

“No.”

“Then incredibly hard,” he said. Mellow’s core product is “Mellow Drive,” a device that transforms ordinary boards into electric ones (retail 1,427.73 Euros). To control my speed, I used a Wiimote-like device tethered to my wrist. Aside from turns, skating with Mellow wasn’t too hard, and if not for the price tag, I might have bought one.

Past the skateboard highway, in a VR demo sponsored by Samsung, I rode an impressively lifelike virtual rollercoaster while wearing a Gear VR headset and sitting in a synced motorized chair. In other booths, guests played VR games in haptic feedback suits and on omnidirectional treadmills.

Sprinkled amongst immersive gaming rigs, startups demoed more business-minded applications of VR and 3D modeling: WiseMind showed off a block-balancing VR game designed to treat chronic pain and stroke rehabilitation patients (it’s currently in clinical trials). 3dapartments.nycshowed 3D models of over 150 apartments available for rent in Brooklyn. Kabaq rendered food in augmented reality. In a demo video playing a display monitor, I watched a toddler ram herself into an iPad in pursuit of a digital burger. I felt glad to have been born in a simpler time.

At the Scan-A-Rama 3D Portrait Studio, a man called “The Great Fredini” scanned visitor’s heads, printed them in red and blue 3D printer filament, and mounted them on decapitated Lego bodies. Next to a display for a mini Epilog laser cutter and a smartphone-controlled cat treat dispenser called Kittyo, a young boy and his father admired geometric sculptures created by the 3D printer Lulzbot.

A sales rep for the female-focused sex tech brand Dame explained how to attach its sold-out, hands-free vibrator called “Eva” to one’s body. “If you imagine this is my clitoris,” she said, holding the cute, purple vibrator to her nose, “you need some, um, flesh around here to hold the thing in place.” It was too abstract for me to imagine.

One stand over, the teledildonics company Kiro showed off what looked like a futuristic, black-and-silver blender. It was the Fleshlight Launch, which, for a cool $199.95, connects via Bluetooth to cam sites, VR games, and synced smart dildos. “I can’t believe it’s so soft,” said a woman in a velvet shirt, sticking her finger inside its electrically pulsing innards.

So this was the future. On the way out, I grabbed one last Cacao Soylent for the road, which was delicious compared to its original powdered form. I didn’t know we’d come so far.

The Worlds Fair Nano 2017, at the Brooklyn Expo Center on Sept. 16 and 17, brought the newest of tech gadgets and ideas into Brooklyn.The organizers were expecting about 10,000 people to attend the ticketed event during the weekend. This year — their first with official sponsors — was sponsored by Intrexon, Samsung, 3Doodler, Soylent, Parrot, HTC, WeWork and Fidelity National Financial.

Despite the name of the fair implying there might be an abundance of nanotech, the “Nano” in the name is a reference to the scale of the fair with the organizers aspiring to hold much bigger events in the future.

The Drone Zone was an area filled with small drones which attendees could try out and fly through an obstacle course with.

There were, however, a wealth of interesting innovations including high-tech air-conditioned dog houses for your dog on hot summer days, bionic boots that enable you to run up to 25 mph, smart bikes motorized to help you ride up hills and edible coffee capsules when you need a burst of caffeine on the go. An interactive futuristic “technology playground” was filled with flying drones, virtual reality headsets, 3D pens that enabled you to create 3D creations like glasses or a flower to take home as a souvenir.

The Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse hosted futurist talks covering robots, cities, dating and even the future of equality. Bina48, a talking robot that can respond to your questions, made an appearance. Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams spoke about the future of Brooklyn, raising questions around health care, access to food, unemployment and sustainability.

A “future food” area was filled with health drinks, Soylent meals in a bottle and snacks made with crushed crickets. Motorized skateboards whizzed up and down a skateboard track. An interactive art area enabled the creation of pieces that changed color at a touch and the inevitable 3Doodler.

Angelica Hill tries out Mellow: The Endless Ride, a motorized skateboard with a handheld controller to change speed.

One of the more intriguing products was a training app and smart ball for both basketball and soccer training, created by Brooklyn-based DribbleUp. When the DribbleUp founders were growing up, they couldn’t afford a trainer all the time, but still wanted to improve at their sports. That’s a problem technology can help solve.

Ben Paster enthused about the prospect that “technology should improve access to things.” They may currently be small, but their aspirations are global. They are “a very small team of Brooklyners” but they expect to be expanding soon and diversity is a priority. Sports is global — if we’re going to reach players around the world we need varying options to make sure we’re impacting the right people with the best product.”

Mark Jennings-Bates, vice president of sales for Pal-V, a manufacturer of flying cars that look more like small helicopters than cars, echoed similar sentiments saying, “It was a good fit for us to participate in the Worlds Fair.” Bates felt the fair took “the public on a futuristic yet practical journey.” This company was one of the few based outside of the U.S. with their headquarters in the Netherlands.

Marc Oshima from AeroFarms, an innovator in indoor vertical farming based in Newark, N.J., spoke of how the importance of being a part of World Fair Nano because it is about the future and the steps that we need to take today to “address these major global issues confronting our food systems”. The company plans to expand internationally, however currently only has one site outside the U.S., in Jeddah Saudi Arabia, established in 2011.

Oshima was keen to emphasize that the company has many immigrants working within it, and its headquarters is located within a sanctuary city. Alper from Pandora Reality, presented their virtual meal viewer Kabaq, which can show you what a meal you are about to order looks like on the plate by using augmented reality to overlay an image of your plate of food in front of you through the camera-like application. Kabaq is based in New York with two Turkish founders, and felt it was important to present their product at World Fair because “it was an event where early adapters meet with creators of the future technologies.”

This global ambition echoes that of the Brooklyn-based event organizers. They have only been operating for a few years, hosting only three fairs thus far, but aspire, in the words of the CEO and co-founder Michael Weiss, is “to organize a 6-month, 100-million-person World’s Fair in the United States.”

They were expecting 10,000 attendees, five times the attendance from a year ago, but in reality had about 7,000 people over the 2 days, still a 400% increase from their first New York event in August last year. By contrast, the annual RSA cybersecurity conference in San Francisco, an event attracting many of the same technology enthusiastists, attracted some 43,000. It felt like a global event only in the same way that baseball’s finals bill themselves the World Series.There was an array of tech enthusiasts, families and new-experience seekers from across Brooklyn.

Andrew Mockridge from the World Fair Nano team branded the event an “overwhelmingly successful and heard great feedback from all over including guests, exhibitors, sponsors, speakers and even the food trucks!” He also recognized the need to push forward and “continue to improve on the experience as we grow and can afford to get larger venues with the help of sponsors.” There were a few technical difficulties that held up some of the speakers, however, other than this all seemed to run smoothly.

Now the World Fair Nano teams go back to the drawing board, recruiting sponsors and exhibitioners. The next Worlds Fair Nanos are planned for early next year in Los Angeles and San Francisco, with a plan to add new areas and events to these fairs. They shared their may be a hackathon or a series of educational workshops.

In other news, the company has recently launched an e-commerce future store called Futurely, selling many of the products that exhibited at the fair, as well as some that have appeared at previous fairs. They will therefore be working hard to grow that as an extra revenue stream to aid in making the next World Fair bigger and better.

On Tuesday night, Game of Thronesstar Nikolaj Coster-Waldau took to the stage at the Brooklyn Expo Center in front of a crowd of excited fans. But the actor wasn’t even the main attraction—in fact, he was just the referee.

The UNDP Global Ambassador used his star power to shine a spotlight on the Global Girls World Cup, a women’s soccer tournament that raises awareness and funds for the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which range from gender equality to climate change. Those happen to be two initiatives close to Coster-Waldau’s heart.

“I picked those two to find a personal connection,” the actor told InStyle at an intimate lunch before the tournament kicked off. “I have two daughters. I grew up with my two older sisters, my mom. I’ve been surrounded by women my whole life. There are still a lot of issues to be dealt with when it comes to gender equality, but we’re not facing the same obstacles like most of the world is facing. More than 150 countries have legislation that discriminates against women.”

Hunter Abrams

Coster-Waldau has two teenage daughters, and hopes his involvement as a global ambassador will teach them “an awareness of the world around them.”

“The world is very big, but we’re also very connected and we all have responsibilities,” he told us. Those responsibilities, in his opinion, also have to do with protecting the world from climate change. “We are very close to a tipping point and there’s no way back. We have to take it seriously,” the actor said.

“If you don’t believe it—if you could just entertain the idea that maybe—what if you’re wrong? Take out the insurance. Because, yeah, what’s the worst that can happen? You’re going to get clean air. You’re going to get clean water. You’re going to get a lot of benefits. If you don’t and you’re wrong, we’re all screwed.”

Hunter Abrams

Combating climate change needs to be a worldwide effort, and for Coster-Waldau, sports are a great way of making those global connections. “You look for things that can cross borders. Art can do that, music, sometimes what I can do can do that. Game of Thrones has become a global thing. But I think sports are the things that always connects people.”

Fashion, too, has a way of crossing borders. That’s why Ditte and Nicolaj Reffstrup of cool-girl brand Ganni have teamed up with the Global Goals World Cup as well. Along with sending a team of social media influencers to compete in the tournament (and raise awareness on their own channels), the brand created a limited-edition T-shirt with 100 percent of the proceeds supporting the soccer tournament, with a focus on gender equality. The $65 tee is available online for customers in Europe and at the Office Newsstand at Canal Street Market in N.Y.C.

“Especially working in an industry that’s full of powerful women, it felt very natural for us to pick up gender equality as a goal,” Nicolaj told InStyle. For Ditte, who played soccer throughout her youth, sports are a great equalizer. “When we played on the soccer team, there were no boundaries. It was just who you were on that field, and that’s an important lesson to learn. We’re all the same, even outside of the field. We’re all equal.”

Hunter Abrams

The theme fits in with Ganni’s latest collections called Love Society and Global Citizen, because “the world is in need of a little love,” they said. “I love to work with topics and turn them into something beautiful and fun. That’s what you can do with fashion. It’s a place where you can play around.”

Hunter Abrams

Model Nadja Bender, a longtime Ganni girl, is one of many influencers who quickly jumped on to support the “good cause” and play a scoring role on the Ganni team.

Hunter Abrams

InStyle also sent a team of staffers (above) to compete in the tournament on behalf of the global goal of quality education for all. Decked out in Tory Sport, the InStyle Educators joined teams from around the world in a soccer tournament that was less about winners and losers than it was about creating one truly global team.

http://brooklynexpocenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/InStyle-Article.jpg465696urizucker@gmail.comhttp://staging.brooklynexpocenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/black-bkx.pngurizucker@gmail.com2017-10-04 16:49:142017-10-04 16:49:14GoT’s Nikolaj Coster-Waldau Refereed a Soccer Tournament in the Name of Gender Equality

Greenpoint Innovations today announced the launch of The Greenest Point, a sustainability awareness raising street art project, to take Climate Week NYC to the people. Internationally acclaimed artists, Faile, Askew1 & Vexta, will paint murals in Greenpoint & North Williamsburg. In addition, this pioneering street art project will feature interactive elements that will highlight these environmental issues by integrating art with technology, film, sound & public voices.

Studies suggest that New York City could be one of the first major victims of climate change in America, submerged by rising seawaters as this century progresses.

“As climate change is increasingly reaching into the back pockets of our daily lives, we now more than ever need innovative and immersive ways to increase its visibility, comprehensibility and relatability”, said Stephen Donofrio, Principal & Founder of Greenpoint Innovations and The Greenest Point. “That is why we have merged worlds together – street art, new age technologies, media and sustainability. The Greenest Point is designed for our friends, neighbors, and strangers, to stimulate issues- and solutions-based conversations about climate change. These murals will be a constant reminder that Brooklyn cares about its future.”

“The environmental woes in North Brooklyn and the world have largely resulted from a lack of concern for our planet. We did not take the necessary precautions to ensure we were safeguarding our planet. Now we are paying the price as we deal with climate change”, said Assemblyman Joe Lentol. “By bringing attention to the environmental issues that have plagued the world around us we can guarantee that this does not happen again. We can also prevent any future damage through sustainable practices. I applaud The Greenest Point for utilizing art to bringing attention to one of our planet’s most pressing issues.”

Mural wall space donated by the Brooklyn EXPO Center. The Greenest Point will conclude with a speaker series and rooftop wrap party at Northern Territory, overlooking the neighborhood and Manhattan skyline. Music provided by NSR (The Deep NYC).Attendance is free, RSVP is suggested but not required. Space is limited.

Join us on our social media channels for updates and the mural location @thegreenestpoint.

Thanks for coming to the PS 34 STUDENT ART SHOW at the Brooklyn Expo Center at 72 Noble Street,
with over 1,000 pieces of student work.
Throughout the year, our students have learned about Matisse, Picasso, Seurat and Lichtenstein among others and created beautiful pieces inspired by their techniques and concepts.
The opening was June 16th 6-8pm.

A huge thank you to Brooklyn Expo Center for the generous donation of their space!June 16th from 6-8pm
Brooklyn Expo Center
72 Noble Street

Maybe you’re one of those people who, no matter where you find yourself, has to stop into any used bookstore you see. Or, maybe you can’t pass a shop with mid-century furniture or vintage jewelry. After all, what if there’s a first edition of Sister Carrie hiding in a stack, just waiting to be discovered? What if there’s an amazing lamp or rare Heywood Wakefield coffee table that will complete your living room?

If that sounds like you, you should know about the Brooklyn Antiques and Book Fair, coming to the brand-new, 40,000-square-foot Brooklyn Expo Center in Greenpoint, Sept. 13-14, 10am to 5pm. More than 100 antiques dealers and rare book sellers will be at the event, peddling their wares.

The brand-new Brooklyn Expo Center at 79 Franklin Street

Exhibitors from all over the county will be displaying furniture, jewelry, paintings, pottery, prints, vintage and antiquarian books on every subject, prints, manuscripts and more. If you want to be among the first to get a peek at what’s for sale, come to the opening night preview on Friday, Sept. 12, 7:30-9:30pm. The event is a benefit for the Greenpoint branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, and refreshments will be provided by Brooklyn Brewery and Milk Truck. (Mmm… grilled cheese and beer.)Tickets for this event cost $25.

Weekend passes for the Brooklyn Antiques and Book Fair are $12 for adults, though you can get a $6 discount by bringing a new children’s book to donate to the Brooke Jackman Foundation or a $5 discount by signing up for Brooklyn Antiques and Book Fair updates. Children get in for free.

The new Brooklyn Expo Center in Greenpoint opened its doors last weekend for an antiques and book show. It went off without a hitch, thanks in part to the renovations the building’s controversial owner made to the high-ceilinged, box-shaped building, according to a spokeswoman for the event’s organizer.

“The space worked so well for the event,” said Leigh Infield. “The glass windows from floor to ceiling bring in so much light and people pick up on that energy.”

The cavernous space that is now open for business at 79 Franklin St., at Noble Street, is a single open room the size of six basketball courts. Another, attached space that takes up the area of two and a half basketball courts is slated to become part of the convention center but is currently occupied by retail tenants. A third space in a separate, five-story building is under construction.

The two-day fair drew more than 4,000 people and there is a lot of demand for place to hold events of its size, as opposed to the gargantuan corporate affairs that take place across the East River, a manager said.

“There are a lot of community-based type events that do not need as much space as a place like the Javits Center,” Brooklyn Expo Center site manager Michelle McConnell. “And this neighborhood is very special and beautiful.”

According the center’s website, the site will offer 28,000 square feet of total exhibition space, office and meeting space, a cafeteria and onsite parking. The website also boasts natural lighting and floor-to-ceiling glass.

Chris Rechner, a manager at the Dumbo Loft family of event spaces, told DNAinfo New York that organizers behind the project are fairly confident the space should be up and running by October. He said the center will be open to expos, trade shows and larger private functions.

“Sometimes people do need seated capacities in the 1,000 to 1,500 range, whether it’s for galas or larger wedding type situations, that can only really happen in hotels at this point,” Rechner said. “We wouldn’t be opposed to having music type of events there.”

The center is only accessible via the G train on the subway, but its website also mentions a close proximity to the Williamsburg Bridge, Queens Midtown Tunnel, Long Island Expressway, area airports and more. Rechner said despite limited subway access, organizers felt it was worth the risk to set up the expo center.

“We feel like companies do want to do stuff here. People are looking to bring bigger corporate functions to these more smaller cultural emerging neighborhoods,” he said, adding that it while it could take some time to get the ball rolling, it could gain momentum.

Those behind the project have also worked on other event spaces, such asGreenpoint Loft, which hosts weddings and other functions at 67 West St.

“We have a similar situation with transportation in that area, and we haven’t had major problems with it,” Rechner said.

“Also, with having parking… I feel that companies that want to get people there, I think they find ways to get people where they want to bring them.”

http://brooklynexpocenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Nh_20141108_0383.jpg10001500urizucker@gmail.comhttp://staging.brooklynexpocenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/black-bkx.pngurizucker@gmail.com2014-10-30 22:14:462016-10-31 11:46:57Greenpoint to Get a Convention Center

The much talked about Greenpoint Expo Center will open its doors this September when it hosts the first ever Brooklyn Antiques and Book Fair.

Over 100 exhibitors from across the country will make their way to the huge glass structure on Franklin Street to sell fine antiques, vintage books, posters, and a vast variety of prints.

The event is being put together by Marvin Getman, the founder of Impact Events Group, best known for the antiques and vintage book fairs it organizes throughout the northeastern part of the country.

“Brooklyn is the hottest market in the country right now and we are excited to be a part of this explosive creative energy,” said Getman. “The timing for a new venue of this kind is ideal, with so many art galleries, one-of-a-kind stores, music venues and trend-setting restaurants opening in the area.”

The two-day fair will be a haven for vintage goods and antiques collectors.

Fine quilts dealer Laura Fisher will be on hand to sell quilts including celebrity-autographed items from 1960’s TV stars like Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and a rare piece of textile work – a schoolgirl’s needlework that dates back to 1811 and depicts St. Patrick’s Cathedral in lower Manhattan.

Among drawings, posters, and paintings the exhibit will feature the works of celebrated early 20th century printmaker and painter Rockwell Kent, Manhattan cityscapes from the 1860s, including a representation of a beer party in Manhattan at the time characterized by a horse-drawn wagon filled with kegs, and a series of eight oil-paintings depicting Prospect Park in the 1920s.

The selection of books is possibly more impressive. The very first edition of the first baseball book, Noah Brooks’ 1884 novel Our Base Ball Club and How It Won The Championship, a 1678 edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost, a 1679 first English-language of the French masterpiece Princess of Cleves, by Madame de Lafayette, a 1731 cookbook that shows readers what English royalty ate, and a four-language Psalter from 1518 are just some of the literary highlights at the fair.

Other notable features of the event include a children’s book donation drive – with those bringing children’s books receiving a $6 entry to the event, half of the full-price admission. All books will be donated to the Brooke Jackman Foundation, which seeks to help underprivileged children through literacy programs.

A preview event with $25 admission tickets held a day before the fair will generate proceeds for the Brooklyn Public Library/Friends of Greenpoint.

For Greenpoint residents, the fair is a first look at the exhibition space, owned by controversial real estate developer Joshua Guttman, owner of the Greenpoint Terminal Market, which burned down in 2006 and the lofts at 247 Water Street, the scene of a 2004 blaze.

Ensure that no kid goes hungry, whether in New York or across the nation, by joining the city’s finest chefs, sommeliers and mixologists on Wednesday, April 18, 2018 for Taste of the Nation for No Kid[...]